wind energy

While “fiscal cliff” negotiations are happening in the nation’s capital, a lesser known issue is also on the table. And depending on the outcome, thousands of jobs in Missouri could be at stake.

Gerald Nickelson is a worker at CG Power Systems in Washington, Missouri. As he walks around the factory, he points out a line of workers in front of a machine, wrapping coil. Later, the coil will be housed inside a green metal tank and shipped off as a complete transformer.

The federal wind Production Tax Credit supports nearly 2,000 Missouri jobs, but is set to expire at the end of the year. If Congress doesn’t act to renew the subsidy that could change, which has some Missouri policy-makers worried.

State Senator-elect Scott Sifton of St. Louis joined representatives from Environment Missouri, a non-profit environmental advocacy organization, on Wednesday to call for Congress to approve the incentive.

In a 2008 speech Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius referred to her state as the “Saudi Arabia of Wind,” and that statement came along with plans to produce 10 percent of the state’s energy from wind by the end of the year.

That was also the year Missouri voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition C, a referendum designed to expand and grow the use of renewable energy here. But two-and-a-half years later most of the regulations contained in Prop C have yet to go into effect.